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Pushing cars with light: Clarke students learn about energy

Hillsman Middle School students Ty Glaze, from left, Jaelan Sharpe and D'Asia Williams play with a carbon dioxide bubble during UGA Bioenergy Day at the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia on Tuesday, Oct. 08, 2013. (Photos Courtesy Georgia Department of Natural Resources)

Hector Navarro celebrates as he learns about momentum during UGA Bioenergy Day at the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia on Tuesday, Oct. 08, 2013. (Photos Courtesy Georgia Department of Natural Resources)

A group of Hilsman Middle School students learn about rockets during UGA Bioenergy Day at the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia on Tuesday, Oct. 08, 2013. (Photos Courtesy Georgia Department of Natural Resources)

A group of Hilsman Middle School students build ethanol molecule out of candy during UGA Bioenergy Day at the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia on Tuesday, Oct. 08, 2013. (Photos Courtesy Georgia Department of Natural Resources)

Nearly 200 seventh-graders learned about energy Tuesday at the University of Georgia’s first Bioenergy Day.

Clarke County school buses full of Hilsman Middle School students started pulling into the State Botanical Garden of Georgia shortly before 10 a.m. Their first stop was an actual biomass gasification plant, which converts woody biomass such as wood chips into gasoline and diesel fuel.

A gasifier inside heats the wood chips up to 1,800 degrees, Auburn University’s Christian Brodbeck explained to the first Hilsman group.

The portable plant, pulled by a truck powered by biodiesel, is much smaller than a commercial plant would be, said Brodbeck, one of the plant’s operators.

There is a commercial-scale biomass gasification plant in Mississippi that is 200 feet tall and produces 100 megawatts, Brodbeck told the students. Another big Mississippi plant, which uses a different process, converts woody biomass into 20,000 gallons a day of gasoline that’s cleaner than oil-derived gasoline, he said. The big barrier for woody biomass conversion is that it’s not efficient enough to compete economically, he said.

But the most riveting displays for Bioenergy Day were in the Botanical Garden’s Callaway Building and down the hill outside the building. Outside, UGA student volunteers generated heavier-than-air soap bubbles with dry ice while the Hilsman students crowded around, holding out their hands to catch one of the thick bubbles before bubbles plopped to the sidewalk.

UGA student Naga Sirisha Parimi quizzed the students about energy from sugar, asking them to guess which of six liquids had the most sugar in it — Coca-Cola, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, soy milk, cow’s milk or grass tea. Many guess that Coke has the most, but the right answer is corn syrup, she said. Grass tea had the least.

Students seemed to like best the little metal cars that were part of Bioenergy Day, said Hilsman science teacher Teresa Johns. Each of the tiny cars was topped by a small solar panel, and students took turns powering the cars along with solar magic — pushing them along with a portable lamp they shined on the solar panel.

Johns gave the event an ‘A’ for educational value; science teachers and students will have a lot to talk about after the first UGA Bioenergy Day, she said.

“It’s wildly successful,” the teacher said. “The focus is very much on the middle school child, and they’re highly engaged and excited.”

UGA’s Bioenergy Systems Research Institute sponsored the event, with a lot of help from the federally funded BioEnergy Science Center and the Creative Discovery Museum of Chattanooga, Tenn.

The demonstration biomass conversion rig is owned by the Southeast Partnership for Integrated Biomass Supply Systems, an organization formed by Auburn University, UGA, the University of Tennessee, North Carolina State University and two private businesses.